1. Skip James | Hard Time Killing Floor Blues
The sound of Skip makes me think about a time - real or not - in which images had not yet overflowed our mind. I don't think Skip James could have imagined that just a few decades later from his recordings, a 22 year-old kid would be hearing his songs, through Internet, in Costa Rica. There's no way he could know this, so he did not care about it. And I can actually hear this fact in his recordings. The same thing happens now but in the other way. You hear bands from little towns in the middle of nowhere, recording songs with the feeling that the whole world is, or will be, listening. And maybe the whole world actually is, or will be, listening to it. The feeling with Skip is that nobody is ever listening.

2. Suicide | Cheree
Working with machine-made sounds without enslaving yourself to them, keeping the humanity and at same time loosing it completely. I think we try to this, we try to build with the sampler, at first we submit ourselves to it, them we understand it and finally turn things around. Its like playing with an entity

3. Lucho Gatica | La Barca
I lived with a friend some time who heard this song every morning. I ended up if not loving, at least remembering it every once in a while. It says...dicen que la distancia es el olvido, pero yo no concibo esa razón... (...they say distance is oblivion, but I do not conceive that reason...). My friend, Caco, still sings it every day. Lucho Gatica was a Chilean bolero's singer from the 50's.

4. Chico Science & Nação Zumbi | Maracatu AtômicoNação Zumbi's style, which someone called mangle beat, is an example for me of how a band can create its own musical language by just allowing the musicians respond naturally and freely to the stimuli from their environment. They make this mangrove punk, with heavy yet liquid beats, that I figure can only come from the experience of being this guys in their specific place in time. Its common in Costa Rica for bands to wonder all too much about what kind of music they want to make. I really think that there's only one kind you can, your kind, the kind your body already knows how to make.

5. Todos Tus Muertos | Slenteng
I heard TTM when I was a kid, because of my older brothers. I loved it. At first, they were a hardcore band, then they turned more ska-punk, then reggae, then they turned into this Haile Selassie cult band and things went pretty weird, but I still loved them, perhaps even more than before (in spite of all that All-mighty worshiping). But after this phase, maybe due to religious differences, they disbanded, and I ended up erasing them completely from my memory. Some months ago, I downloaded their record Subversiones, and started to sing it all over again like when I was 11. I heard they have a new record called Crisis Mundial or something, although it's probably a long shot I will give it a try.

6. Los Olimareño | El GavilánPepe Guerra and Braulio López were two folk singers from Uruguay in the 60's and 70's. Their songs were prohibited in 1973. It was a turbulent time in South America, with the police actually killing people on the street for singing the wrong songs. Yeah, old story, but true. Music, for them, was not about images, it was about action. It was different, that's all, and I like to remind myself every once in a while, that music can be different, can be more than music, can be less than music, can be just music, because music happens within a broader phenomenon: life.

7. Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros | Bhindi Bhagee
I am really amazed with Joe Strummer's late work. The three records he made with Mescaleros are a marvelous thing to me. Not just their eclectic style, but the humanity in Joe's voice, it's something I really relate too. He has this tone full of anguish, corrosive yet full-of-hope. It's like he is welcoming us into the future, the future in which he already lived while we were all stuck in the present. And he says Welcome stranger, to the humble neighborhoods.

8. Cuarteto Cedron | La Camarada
This song belongs to the record Trottoirs De Buenos Aires, the lyrics were written by Julio Cortázar and Edgardo Cantón. Their words, entwined with the accordion and the deep quivering voice of Juan Tata Cedron, will tear your chest apart. It's a rough ride through tango sensibility, full of suicides and the smell of death. It amazes me how autonomous tango sensibility actually is. I mean, I hear this record and the whole world can suddenly be understood from a very different angle, it feeds from a completely different sense of pain and joy.

9. Booker T. & The M.G.'s | Green Onions
This band is kind of a dream band for me. They have this naive cool that always - and I mean always - gets me to smile, laugh or fall into some kind of silly dancing. And it's like they have a ghost for a singer. Although nobody ever sings, you get the constant feel that there is someone actually waiting for the opportunity to come in with words. But it just never happens. This ghost singer is probably my mind, listening to the music and just silently dancing to it.

10. Nerious Joseph | My Girl (feat. Tenor Saw)
From the Fever Pitch (Dancehall, 1994) record. This is perfect. One beat, as simple and contagious as it gets. If you don't move while hearing this, don't worry: you are a cadaver, you are already dead and nothing can harm you. And it's very curious, I play around with this beat a lot in rehearsals and songs, because it works like a law of nature: when applied, flavor comes around. Ha! I'm overreacting, but maybe it is like some kind of Fibonacci rule to music. And well, the front cover of this dance-hall compilation is ridiculous, perfect, I think you should look for it right now.

SIDE B | by Adrian Poveda

1. Godspeed You! Black Emperor | Sleep
Not really an obscure reference but it's basically one of my favorite bands of the past years, I can listen to them anytime and never get tired of it. First time I heard this I was working at a crappy job in a particularly hot summer in Costa Rica, there was no A/C and I remember feeling really weird walking down the road home, listening to this and thinking something inevitable was going to happen, sort of like that character in Camus' novel that kills another guy because he's overwhelmed by his surroundings. I'm really into how sound and vibration can play with your head.

2. Jaime Sin Tierra | No Te Desanimes
Gotta use this chance to promote some great Latino American bands. I don't think this band exists anymore, but this record is awesome (...lo que va a encandilar es el día). It's got sort of a Galaxie 500 vibe and sweet lyrics about love and friends far away.

3. Congelador | Abrigo
Probably the best new band I've heard from Chile. We were listening to this EP the morning before recording our first EP, not to say we sound like them, cause we dont, but there's something about the spirit of the album that we share. You can get it for free, google it.

4. The Clean | Anything Could Happen
I love the Flying Nun bands, they're a great example for me in terms of achieving timeless songs with limited resources, this is their most famous tune for a reason, it kicks ass. The video was really fun too, the lead singer looking like a young Bob Dylan. I discovered them (like a lot of people) thanks to a Stephen Malkmus interview. Gotta love The Verlaines and The Chills too.

5. Joe Meek | I Hear A New World
Funny thing about this one is that it sounds very similar to this sort of romantic music genre we got in Latin America called bolero (it's actually Cuban) but really trippy and weird 'cause it came out of Joe Meek's head, chipmunk background vocals included. Gotta love the cover of the album too.

6. Las Robertas | The Curse
Our good friends and comrades-in-arms here in Costa Rica. They're a breath of fresh air in a lot of senses, for Costa Rica and the whole Latino American scene. They synthesize the great things about their genre, and in my opinion should be out there playing with Vivian Girls or Best Coast side-by-side. I'm sure its just a matter of time. Plus they're really hardworking and just a bunch of sweet unpretentious girls.

7. The Hospitals | Can't Get Out Of Bed
Their music is the equivalent of dropping a piano from the top of a building. I'd love to catch them live and/or play with them sometime. We would sell aspirins after the show and get rich. I know this is sort of a cover of a Charlatans UK song but I think it's impressive how they did it. The noise moves like an enraged sea in there.

8. Pescado Rabioso | Superchería
This is a legendary band from Argentina, lead by the genius, Luis Alberto Espinetta. I'm not really into what he did after this, but this record (Artaud) and the ones he's got with his first band, Almendra, are just insuperable. The lyrics are amazing by the way, Espinetta's a fucking poet.

9. Los Saicos | Demolición
I still don't understand how something like this happened. These guys were playing the dirtiest, most savage garage rock you'll ever hear, even by today's standards. If you think The Sonics are bad-ass you gotta listen to this. They were playing punk rock and even calling themselves punk (you can see it on the cover of their only record, where it says Wild Teen Punk from Peru - 1965 on top). Their lyrics ranged from blowing up train stations to straightjackets and cemeteries.

10. The Olivia Tremor Control | I Have Been Floated
Had to squeeze in an Elephant 6 band. Ever since I heard about them and what they were trying to do it's been my goal to have a place where lots of different bands and people can come together and participate in projects. Actually, since last september a couple of bands and us, have been renting this old house downtown, that's were we record our stuff and rehearse every week. It's hard cause we're all paying for it with our dayjobs and this has meant some instability. We don't have any furniture and the electricity keeps breaking down but it's been really fun to share a space with good friends.